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Saturday, December 2, 2017

First Look purchased the url, "The Intercept" in January, 2014. "The Intercept" (aptly named) originally consisted of the posts below with many reposts of articles and blogposts collected to share. They consist of stories that we thought were the most important and verifiable news/opinions at the time.

There are also a number of original posts covering various topics we happened to be knee-deep in exploring. This collection was a hobby/habit of sharing what I learned and presenting in a news hub style format while I was confined to a hospital bed for a couple years (in and out).
Consider this blog like a "Wayback Machine" that preserves the more controversial articles (many long gone from their original sites) and compiles them in a way that serves as a snapshot of what was happening at the time.

I learned a lot during this time and I hope there are some useful references for others.

Apologies in advance for any media that is missing due to its dependence on other sites. This included many youtubes and blip.tv vids.

Sino-Russian amphibious tanks and marines storm a beachhead in a 2005 assault drill.

The
PLA aims to beef up its troops' combat readiness and prepare for actual
war situations through exercises this year, according to the latest
annual training directive, amid escalating tensions between China and
Japan over territorial disputes in the East China Sea.

"In 2013, the goal set for the entire army and the People's Armed
Police force is to bolster their capabilities to fight and their ability
to win a war … to be well-prepared for a war by subjecting the army to
hard and rigorous training on an actual combat basis," according to
yesterday's People's Liberation Army Daily, which referred to a training blueprint issued by the PLA's Department of the General Staff for the entire force.

The directive came in stark contrast to that of its predecessor. In
last year's directive, more emphasis was placed on joint military
trainings and co-ordination among different PLA services.

This year's statement stresses the urgency of real combat abilities
in all military training by repeating the phrase "fighting wars", or dazhang, as many as 10 times in the article, which was no more than 1,000 words. The phrase did not appear in last year's directive.

The changes could be a result of the rising tensions in waters
between China and Japan, while they might also indicate that there is a
different focus for the PLA, since the Central Military Commission's
chairman Hu Jintao was succeeded by Xi Jinping , the new PLA
commander-in-chief since November.

Separately, state broadcast media reported in the past week that the
PLA's naval air force kicked off the open-sea training portion of its
annual exercise programme. No details were given on the specific dates
or duration.

The General Staff department's training directive came a day after
Japan's Self-Defence Forces conducted a massive military exercise on
training grounds in Narashino, on the outskirts of Tokyo, on Sunday, in
which 20 aircraft, 300 personnel and 33 vehicles participated.

Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera issued a statement after
the drill insisting that Chinese ships had trespassed in "Japanese
waters" near the Senkaku Islands, which are known in China as the
Diaoyus, and that the security surrounding Japan was therefore being
tightened.

The disputed chain of islands in the East China Sea has been claimed by both China and Japan since the early 1970s.

Andrei Chang, editor-in-chief of the Canada-based Kanwa Defence Review,
said, "The PLA is making its propaganda voice louder this year, aside
from shifting their target to Japan instead of the Philippines last
year," adding the statement was more or less the same as last year's.

The siege of Leningrad is still considered the most lethal siege in
world history, a shocking “racially motivated starvation policy”,
described as: “an integral part of Nazi policy in the Soviet Union
during World War 11.”

The
872 day siege began on 8th September 1941 and was finally broken on
27th January 1944. It is described as: “one of the longest and most
destructive sieges in history and overwhelmingly the most costly in
casualties.” Some historians cite it as a genocide. Due to record
keeping complexities the exact number of deaths resultant from the
blockade’s deprivations are uncertain, figures range from 632,000 to 1.5
million.

Sieges now extend to entire countries, they have become the torture
before the destruction. And they are not counted in long days, but in
long years. Iran thirty three years, Iraq thirteen-plus years.
Ironically the disparity in the deaths in Iraq resultant from that
siege, mirror near exactly what was considered a “genocide” in
Leningrad.

Syria has been subject to EU “restrictions” since 2011, ever more
strangulating, with near every kind of financial transaction made
impossible by May 2011- when “restrictions” were also placed on
President Assad himself, all senior government officials, senior
security and armed forces Heads. The list of that denied is dizzying
(i.) By February 2012, assets of individuals were frozen, as those of
the Central Bank of Syria.

Cargo flights by Syrian carriers to the EU were also barred, as was
trade in gold, precious metals and diamonds – anything which might
translate in to hard cash, without which neither individuals or
countries can purchase the most basic essentials.
By July 2012 Syrian Arab Airlines and even Syria’s Cotton Marketing Organisation had joined the EU’s victims.

America of course, had been way ahead of the game, with the Syria
Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Act (ii) signed in to law on
12th December 2003, the year of Iraq’s comprehensive US-led destruction.
Thus the mighty USA’s personal siege on under twenty one million
people, is now entering its tenth year.

By last August, as with Iraq before it, the inability to trade meant
that, as ever, the now Nobel Peace Prize winning EU and the policies of
the Nobel Peace Prize winning US President, were targeting Syria’s most
vulnerable.

“While it sounds like an outrageous claim, one is left to inquire whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place—at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation’s news media have described.”
Anderson Cooper jumps on this portion of the sentence:

“While it sounds like an outrageous claim, one is left to inquire whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place—"
before the following qualifying prep:

"at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation’s news media have described.”

This is intended to milk a reaction of outrage from his audience.

Mr. Cooper doesn't quite know who he's messing with. Personally, I
would not want to go toe-to-toe with Professor James Tracy. I've read
his past work and he is one of the sharper knives in the drawer.
Anderson had to use a deceptive excerpt out of context in order for
people to buy his fake righteous indignation.

Believe it or not, there are actually people out there who are
convinced that last month's horrific shooting in Newtown, Connecticut
was staged. Anderson Cooper opened his show tonight taking on these conspiracy theorists.
He said that ordinarily, he wouldn't give much thought to insane
conspiracies, but one of the people pushing them is a Florida professor
who raises doubts as to whether the shooting "ever took place" in the
way that the media described, and the whole thing was just a huge
conspiracy to get the country behind gun control. And as if that wasn't
unbelievable enough, he also suspects that some of the parents of the
children were really actors. – Mediaite.com

Free-Market Analysis: A recent CNN/Anderson
Cooper "Keeping Them Honest" segment focused on a media professor,
James Tracy, who has publicly claimed that the Sandy Hook shootings "may
not have happened at all, at least ... the way they have been
described."
An article by the Sun Sentinel describes the Tracy controversy as follows:

FAU prof stirs controversy by disputing Newtown massacre ... A
communication professor known for conspiracy theories has stirred
controversy at Florida Atlantic University with claims that last month's
Newtown, Conn., school shootings did not happen as reported — or may
not have happened at all.

Moreover, James Tracy asserts in radio interviews and on his
memoryholeblog.com, that trained "crisis actors" may have been employed
by the Obama administration in an effort to shape public opinion in favor of the event's true purpose: gun control.

... In one of his blog posts, "The Sandy Hook School Massacre:
Unanswered Questions and Missing Information," Tracy cites several
sources for his skepticism, including lack of surveillance video or
still images from the scene, the halting performance of the medical
examiner at a news conference, timeline confusion, and how the accused
shooter was able to fire so many shots in just minutes ...

Tracy said also has doubts about the official version of the
Kennedy assassination, the Oklahoma City bombing, the 9-11 terror
attacks and the Aurora, Colo., theater murders."I describe myself as a scholar and public intellectual," he
said, "interested in going more deeply into controversial public events.
Although some may see [my theories] as beyond the pale, I am doing what
we should be doing as academics."

Cooper is at his silky best in this segment, blasting away at the
professor's theories and even implying that he ought to be fired for
voicing such an opinion.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

In early March of 2009, The Department of Homeland Security, held it’s annual National Fusion Center Conference [1].
The conference highlighted the necessity for Fusion Centers to achieve
Baseline Capabilities in the sharing of information and intelligence
with the federal government and each other.

At the end of the same month the DHS gave a press release [2] to announce their selection of Purdue, and Rutgers Universities to co-lead the newest Center of Excellence (COE).

Centers of Excellence were created through the
Homeland Security Act of 2002; the first centers began operation in
2004. With the addition of the newest one above, there are a total of 12
Centers across the country. The total number of these centers is
skewed; as each center is in collaboration with multiple universities;
as well as being partners with local, state, federal, and international
entities. These COE’s also work with national laboratories, and
corporate partners such as the RAND corporation to offer viable real
world applications. In the end, there aren’t 12 centers, but a web of
several hundred, and possibly thousands of centers.

Notice, their admitted overall goal is not only to ‘disseminate
knowledge’ and technical advances for the homeland security ‘mission’,
but also to create a Homeland Security Culture within the educational system; [5], 6].

Each COE website[3] has an education link; not all sites have their
educational portion up for viewing. The ones who do have the educational
curricula visible, show programs offered for K-12 and college
curricula, into graduate school education. From Purdue University’s COE website [7],

“This program is designed to support undergraduate and
graduate students in developing the skills to become preeminent
scientists in the homeland security specific and technical community.”

The Orwellian Office of University Programs, is not only creating “Obama’s Youth”, but also creating “scientists” who are studied in Department of Homeland Security disciplines!

Amongst other activities, they do as the name suggests; they create
studies. Hidden amongst the Islamic Jihad studies[9] were the reports of
the real terrorists; you, and I!

Two reports stuck out more than the rest. The first was a study
conducted from 2007 to 2008, and finished with the creation of the U.S.
Extremist Criminal Terror database[10]. The study, and now database
focus on far-right extremists; the data base of U.S. Extremist Crime,
comprises 1990 to 2005.

The other study of interest was,“Homegrown Radicalization and the Role of Social Networks and Social Inclusiveness in the United States”[11].
There is no finished report of this study. The last update was, July
31, 2008. It seems this study is the one requested through The Homegrown
Terrorism Prevention Act (H.R. 1955/S. 1959)[12] “The act would
establish a national commission and a university-based “Center for
Excellence” to study and propose legislation to prevent the threat of
“radicalization” of Americans.” Interestingly enough, just a few months
after the final START study update on July 31, 2008, the DHS released,
The “Domestic Extremism Lexicon”[13]. This Lexicon was a “newly
unclassified Department of Homeland Security report warns against the
possibility of violence by unnamed “right-wing extremists” concerned
about illegal immigration, increasing federal power, restrictions on
firearms, abortion and the loss of U.S. sovereignty and singles out
returning war veterans as particular threats.”[14] All this came from
the START Center of Excellence!

Friday, January 11, 2013

Americans die younger and have more illnesses and accidents on
average than people in other high-income countries—even wealthier,
insured, college-educated Americans, a report said Wednesday.

The study by the federally sponsored National Research Council and
Institute of Medicine found the U.S. near the bottom of 17 affluent
countries for life expectancy, with high rates of obesity and diabetes,
heart disease, chronic lung disease and arthritis, as well as infant
mortality, injuries, homicides, teen pregnancy, drug deaths and sexually
transmitted diseases.

"The [U.S.] health disadvantage is pervasive—it affects all age
groups up to age 75 and is observed for multiple diseases, biological
and behavioral risk factors, and injuries," said the report's authors,
who are public-health and medicine academics recruited by the government
panels.

The shorter life expectancy for Americans largely was attributed to
high mortality for men under age 50, from car crashes, accidents and
violence. But the report also said U.S. women's gains in life expectancy
had been lagging behind other well-off countries.

The authors offered a range of possible explanations for Americans'
worse health and mortality, including social inequality. They also
described criticisms including limited availability of contraception for
teenagers, community designs that discourage physical activity such as
walking, air pollution and access to firearms, as well as individual
behaviors such as high calorie consumption.
The U.S. health-care system wasn't spared criticism, with authors
describing it as fragmented, lacking sufficient primary-care physicians
and posing financial barriers to millions of Americans who lack
insurance or are unable to afford out-of-pocket medical costs.

But the chairman of the panel of authors, Steven Woolf, a professor
of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the report
showed that health outcomes were determined "by much more than health
care."

"Our health as Americans is only partly aided by having a very good
health-care system," he said. "Much of our health disadvantage comes
from factors outside of the clinical system and outside of what doctors
and hospitals can do."

The Obama administration has aimed to improve Americans' health by
expanding insurance coverage through the 2010 Affordable Care Act, while
Republicans have pushed for giving the private sector a greater role in
managing health care through changes to such programs as Medicare.

Public health has received relatively little attention from
lawmakers, despite campaigns by high-profile figures such as first lady
Michelle Obama on childhood obesity and New York City Mayor Michael
Bloomberg on smoking, gun control and the sale of high-calorie
beverages.

"The political environment on health is so wrapped up right now
around implementation of health reform that we need to have the space to
have this larger conversation and for people to understand that having
health insurance is necessary but not sufficient to close this gap,"
said Jeff Levi, head of the Trust for America's Health, a public health
advocacy group. He wasn't involved in the study.

The new report noted that average life expectancy for American men,
at 75.6 years, was the lowest among the 17 countries and almost four
years shorter than for Switzerland, the best-performing nation.

American women's average life expectancy, 80.8 years, was
second-lowest among the countries and five years shorter than Japan's,
which had the highest expectancy.
The report's authors were particularly critical of the availability
of guns, writing: "One behavior that probably explains the excess
lethality of violence and unintentional injuries in the United States is
the widespread possession of firearms and the common practice of
storing them [often unlocked] at home."

The authors noted that Americans who lived past age 75 had higher
survival rates compared with similar countries, and Americans overall
had better rates of surviving cancer and strokes. They also said the
U.S. better controls high blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking rates and
use of alcohol than many other nations.

The report didn't directly consider U.S. health in the context of
spending on care, but noted that America's low outcomes were striking
given that U.S. per capita health spending exceeds that of other
countries.

Fatally Flawed: The Pursuit of Justice in a Suspicious Election

Voices of Opposition

Basic Statistics for U.S. Imperialism

New Additions

The World Reacts...

Click Picture

See Hillary Clinton Make Fun of Gaddafi's Murder

Here is Israel's Crap Treatment of an American Jew

People participate in movements when that particular movement

(1) meets their concrete and tangible needs,(2) offers individuals real experiences in the movement's outcome(3) provides a sense of community,(4) makes available ongoing education and skills training and(5) shows direct and effective ways for people to take further action.

A loose interpretation of a message sent on Sunday, October 4th, 2009 by the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy

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A worker walks out of a factory building outfitted with nets, installed to prevent workers from jumping to their deaths, at a Foxconn factory, in Langfang, Hebei Province August 3, 2010. There have been nearly a dozen suicides at Foxconn plants around China this year alone, prompting calls for investigations into poor working conditions at the plants that make parts for customers such as Apple, HP and Dell. (REUTERS/Jason Lee) #

Portland 9/11 Truth Meetup Group and the Smell of Bacon

You can't have peacefor the sake of peace.Peace is a consequenceof an equitable arrangement.